


Corner

by bonehandledknife (ladywinter), Primarybufferpanel (ArwenLune)



Series: The Mountains Are The Same [7]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Buckle Up Kids We're Going To The Feels Place, Gen, Hallucinations, Podfic Welcome, Puppy Piles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-05
Updated: 2015-08-05
Packaged: 2018-04-13 02:51:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4504848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladywinter/pseuds/bonehandledknife, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArwenLune/pseuds/Primarybufferpanel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Corner: An inside corner of rock, the opposite to an arête </p><p>   <i>“Boss, boss,” somebody murmurs, a point of calm and a broad, calloused, cool hand cupping her face. “It’s just us.”</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Corner

She remembered their second raid. She remembered how they came back stumbling, how she watched as five of her boys were delivered to the Organic Mechanic, how she’d already sent the Ace off to look for replacements because while the five will need downtime, there were four more lost to the desert. But mostly because she couldn’t stand to be next to him, bearing his understanding.

She’d followed them in to the Organic Mechanic and the room felt at once large and small, the shafts of blue light falling on the broken like the sun itself was watching. Furiosa leaned against the altar or a pillar or a wall, watching the Mechanic as he worked. The disgusting man felt her gaze, and leered back a hello.

“Pay attention to your work,” she snapped. He’d laughed as three, four, six, ten arms grew from him to work on her boys, to sew up or to snap bones into place, wrapped ribs, stapled here and there, and gave it all a casual white dusting. Five War Pups stepped up as one, to attend the wounded, their arms thin and bodies small and cold. _Useless,_ she’d thought, _her crew needed to be warm_. The coughing in the bloodbag room echoed its way around the stones, as did the moans of the dying and of the ferals, hung. There’s no place for her boys here.

The Mechanic stalls, eyeing her, saying something about keeping them all here, ‘for observation’. His hand curls around the back of a white-painted neck, like he had a right to. Like they were _his_.

“They’re wasting space,” Furiosa had snapped, “get them up.” Her crew, injured and not, looked up at her in fear. “ _Now_.”

The injured were lifted and those that could walk stumbled after her, or were carried. Flashes of the tunnels ran by, leaking pipes, fetid smells, the sound of rocks falling. She felt like she was moving through sand, too slow. Furiosa reached her room and pushed through and they’d paused at her door like a wall.

It was silent here. The air was clear and fresh. There was no echoes of coughing or of death. Her crew looked around themselves with surprise on their faces.

“Sit them down.” She did not have time for this.

Furiosa went to her alcoves and found an extra length of thin pipe she’d been thinking of working into a spare arm. It flickered back and forth from steel to bone in her hand. She passed it to the war boy attending the one with the broken arm.

“Use this to splint it.”

They looked at her blankly, at the bone-and-pipe and then at her face. Furiosa huffed in impatience and, ripping a length from her bedding, her clothing, her skin, wrapped the forearm against her bone herself.

She nodded at her mattress, for them to lie down, “Heal, I’ll need you on the next run.” Her bed had spilled large somehow, like their eyes, in the way that dreams do, and Furiosa watched herself suddenly surrounded and cupped by bodies and warmth as she’d pressed a white powdered head to her collarbone and murmured, “Rest.”

A hand was on her ankle—

 

Furiosa wakes up.

For a long moment everything is warm and familiar and comforting, and she sighs—

Her lungs burn, it feels like she’s breathing water, and she fights to surface, clawing for handholds.

There’s an explosion of sound and movement around her, and then there are hands on her arms and weight holding down her legs, a hand behind her head, and before the panic can fully register the hands are lifting her, raising her to the surface.

She hears a terrible, animal sound of pain and realises it’s her own breathing.

“Hey, hey,” says a low voice, and another, “Get her— give her— !” and there’s movement again and talking in faraway, hollow voices and somebody peels her hand from the handhold she’d found and she flails for grip she can not--she _can_ _not—_

“Boss, boss,” somebody murmurs, a point of calm and a broad, calloused, _cool_ hand cupping her face. “It’s just us.”

She moves - is moved - and then there’s support behind her back, a warm, breathing body to lean against, and the instinctive urge to fight her way up and _out_ fades as her breathing eases.

“You with us now, Boss?” the same low, calm voice asks, and she finds the forearm of the hand that is against her face, and squeezes the thick, corded muscle in answer. “That’s it, nice an’ easy, Boss.”

The weight on her legs lifts away, and she shifts a little more comfortably against whoever’s propping her up.

“...Ace?” she mouthes, not able to put breath behind it. She hears a shallow, rattling sigh, feels the air against her face.  

“Yeah, yeah, still got your Ace,” he says softly. “Despite your best efforts. We’ll—” she feels his thick fingers wipe moisture from her cheek. “We’ll talk about that later.”

 

* * *

 

Somewhere she hears:

_Her fever’s gettin’ worse._

_It’s her body, fighting infection. The fight with Corpus’ retainers re-opened her wounds. We closed it but— ah it’s too late for regrets. You must keep her warm, let her sweat it out. And keep her hydrated._

_Hydrated?_

_Topped off with Aqua-cola._

_And change her dressings often. Let it breathe a bit._

_Like an engine._

_...yes, both fuel and air. But tell me if she runs much hotter than this. Feel around her neck, yes like that._

_Miss Gale, she’ll get better though, right?_

_Boss is strong, you shut your mouth Rachet._

Furiosa mentally smiles at that, and drifts off again to the sound of her Ace’s snores.

 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[PODFIC] Corner](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8538736) by [Primarybufferpanel (ArwenLune)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArwenLune/pseuds/Primarybufferpanel)




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